The Schoolmaster in Comedy and Satire

Paperback | February 7, 2012

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1894 Excerpt: ... NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS Forty years ago, everybody was laughing or crying over Fanny Fern. Her bright pictures of life and her pathetic sketches were everywhere read in the United States. Her own personality was discernible on every page. When her story of Ruth Hall appeared, it was universally recognized as a sort of autobiography. The key to the story was soon supplied, for the public was deeply interested in all that pertained to the peerless Fanny. "Hyacinth Ellet," the selfish fop in the narrative, was declared to be her brother, the well-known poet, Nathaniel Parker Willis. Fanny Fern is no longer read, and her sarcastic detraction has lost its force. With the petty feuds of her family the public no longer concerns itself, and the general estimation of the poet is based upon the merits of his works. These are gaining in favor as the years go by, and criticism is left free to pass upon them without the bias which the brilliant but unloving sister created in the minds of her vast army of readers. Willis was a native of Portland, Me., and was born in 1806. He was graduated from Yale College at the age of twenty, and at the same time entered upon his career as an author. His first volume of poems was published over the pseudonym of " Ray." An early enterprise in journalism failed, but he soon achieved success as a European correspondent of The New York Mirror, in which he was pecuniarily interested. His letters of travel which appeared in this magazine were subsequently collected and published under the title, Pencilings by the Way. In Europe Willis became attached to the American Ministry at Paris, and traveled extensively through the Mediterranean lands and the East. He returned to the United States in 1837, taking up his residence near Oswego, N.Y. Aga...